Delft Conference Proceedings Editorial 2008: safety and efficacy for new techniques and imaging using new equipment to support European Legislation

Radiation Protection Dosimetry, 129 (1-3): 1–2     

Research-informed evidence and support for road safety legislation: Findings from a national survey

Public opinion is influential in the policymaking process, making it important to understand the factors that influence popular support or opposition to public health policies. Researchers and policymakers tend to agree that scientific evidence can inform decision-making, but this influence has not been explored sufficiently, especially in the area of injury prevention. This paper considers the potential for the communication of evidence-based research and public health data to influence opinion about legislation that could reduce road-related injury. We conducted a nationally-representative online survey to assess public attitudes toward four road-safety laws; ignition interlock, school zone red-light cameras, restrictions on infotainment systems, and children's bicycle helmets. For each law, we assessed initial support and then provided a research-informed statistic on either the injury risk posed or the law's efficacy reducing risk and re-examined the law's support or opposition. The survey was completed by 2397 U.S. adults. Each law was initially supported by a majority of respondents, with greatest support for ignition interlock (74.4%) and children's bicycle helmets (74.8%). Exposure to research-informed statements increased legislative support for 20–30% of respondents. Paired analyses demonstrate significant increases toward supportive opinions when comparing responses to the initial and research-informed statements. The study demonstrates considerable public support for evidence-based road-related laws. Overall support was augmented by exposure to research data. Injury prevention practitioners can capitalize on this support in efforts to build support for legislation that would prevent injury. Researchers should be encouraged to expand their efforts to share research results with both the public and policymakers.     

Experience of introducing a new database for an approved coordination and recordkeeping service

The Health Protection Agency (and its predecessors) has many years experience of running Approved Dosimetry Services, including coordination and recordkeeping. This paper describes the experiences gained whilst introducing a new web-based system for coordination and recordkeeping to replace the ageing mainframe database. This includes the planning of the project, the migration of the data between the two systems, parallel running of all the operational tasks and lessons learned during the process.     

Development of a new passive integral dosemeter for gamma ray monitoring using an imaging plate

A new passive integral dosemeter for gamma ray monitoring is being developed using an imaging plate (IP). In the application of IPs to dosimetry, a fading effect causes serious problems. The fading is considered to be caused by the recombination or holes and charges trapped shallowly in the F centres, which have several activation energies. Appropriate annealing procedures allow elimination of trapped charges with low activation energies, and quantitative estimation of the radiation dose is possible. The optimum condition for minimising the effect of fading on dose estimation was obtained by post-irradiation annealing of BAS-MS (BAS-MS2025, fabricated by Fuji Film Co. Ltd) IPs at 80 degrees C for 24 h. This was confirmed by calculation. Under this condition, the detection limit was calculated to be 3.15 microSv when 10% error is allowed. A 1-month integral dose was measured by the IP. The results were compared with those obtained using a commercially available fluoro-glass dosemeter.     

Publications from the European community's biotechnology action programme (BAP): Multinationality,acknowledgement of support,and citations

Results are presented of an analysis of 1333 papers in the SCI from 1986–1993 supported by the BAP, with their degree of trans-nationality, level of dependence on the programme and propensity to acknowledge this, and their record of citation by authors in different groups of countries. The papers are nearly three times as transnational in their addresses as other EC biotechnology papers, but nearly 25% of single country papers depend on foreign co-authors or acknowledge transnational support. BAP was acknowledged by 80% of the papers that received 20% or more support. Citations by authors from other EC Member States account for many of the extra citations received by BAP papers and show that the results of the programme have been effectively disseminated by the Commission within the EC.     

Challenges to Bayesian decision support using morphological matrices for design: empirical evidence

A novel Bayesian design support tool is empirically investigated for its potential to support the early design stages. The design support tool provides dynamic guidance with the use of morphological design matrices during the conceptual or preliminary design stages. This paper tests the appropriateness of adopting a stochastic approach for supporting the early design phase. The rationale for the stochastic approach is based on the uncertain nature of the design during this part of the design process. The support tool is based on Bayesian belief networks (BBNs) and uses a simple but effective information content–based metric to learn or induce the model structure. The dynamically interactive tool is assessed with two empirical trials. First, the laboratory-based trial with novice designers illustrates a novel emergent design search methodology. Second, the industrial-based trial with expert designers illustrates the hurdles that are faced when deploying a design support tool in a highly pressurised industrial environment. The conclusion from these trials is that there is a need for designers to better understand the stochastic methodology for them to both be able to interpret and trust the BBN model of the design domain. Further, there is a need for a lightweight domain-specific front end interface is needed to enable a better fit between the generic support tool and the domain-specific design process and associated tools.     

A new decoupling method for phased arrays in magnetic resonance imaging: an experimental approach

A new decoupling method for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) phased arrays is studied by experimental measurements. A laboratory measurement setup is built to characterise the signal coupling paths and their coupling strengths. A new concept, the receiving mutual impedance, is introduced to measure the coupled signals between the phased array elements. Measured values of the receiving mutual impedances for a typical two-element surface-coil array are obtained and used in other experiments to find the uncoupled voltages from the received voltages. Results show that the new decoupling method is both accurate and robust over a wide frequency range. Comparison of the uncoupled voltages with the actual ideal uncoupled voltages confirms that if the position of the signal source is known, almost error-free uncoupled voltages can be obtained. The errors resulted from a change of the position of the signal source are also measured and it is found that they generally increase with the deviation of the signal source from its position where the receiving mutual impedances are measured. The maximum % error of the uncoupled voltages is found to be below 10% when the signal source changes its position over a distance of half the length of a surface coil. Over this distance change, the signal isolation between the two surface coils is found to be at least 20 dB, whereas the maximum is more than 300 dB. The results demonstrate the effectiveness and the feasibility of the new decoupling method for use in MRI phased arrays.     

Multimodal magnetic resonance imaging for Alzheimer's disease diagnosis using hybrid features extraction and ensemble support vector machines

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is increasingly used in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) in order to identify abnormalities in the brain. Indeed, cortical atrophy, a powerful biomarker for AD, can be detected using structural MRI (sMRI), but it cannot detect impairment in the integrity of the white matter (WM) preceding cortical atrophy. The early detection of these changes is made possible by the novel MRI modality known as diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). In this study, we integrate DTI and sMRI as complementary imaging modalities for the early detection of AD in order to create an effective computer-assisted diagnosis tool. The fused Bag-of-Features (BoF) with Speeded-Up Robust Features (SURF) and modified AlexNet convolutional neural network (CNN) are utilized to extract local and deep features. This is applied to DTI scalar metrics (fractional anisotropy and diffusivity metric) and segmented gray matter images from T1-weighted MRI images. Then, the classification of local unimodal and deep multimodal features is first performed using support vector machine (SVM) classifiers. Then, the majority voting technique is adopted to predict the final decision from the ensemble SVMs. The study is directed toward the classification of AD versus mild cognitive impairment (MCI) versus cognitively normal (CN) subjects. Our proposed method achieved an accuracy of 98.42% and demonstrated the robustness of multimodality imaging fusion.     

Improved protein secondary structure prediction using support vector machine with a new encoding scheme and an advanced tertiary classifier

Prediction of protein secondary structures is an important problem in bioinformatics and has many applications. The recent trend of secondary structure prediction studies is mostly based on the neural network or the support vector machine (SVM). The SVM method is a comparatively new learning system which has mostly been used in pattern recognition problems. In this study, SVM is used as a machine learning tool for the prediction of secondary structure and several encoding schemes, including orthogonal matrix, hydrophobicity matrix, BLOSUM62 substitution matrix, and combined matrix of these, are applied and optimized to improve the prediction accuracy. Also, the optimal window length for six SVM binary classifiers is established by testing different window sizes and our new encoding scheme is tested based on this optimal window size via sevenfold cross validation tests. The results show 2% increase in the accuracy of the binary classifiers when compared with the instances in which the classical orthogonal matrix is used. Finally, to combine the results of the six SVM binary classifiers, a new tertiary classifier which combines the results of one-versus-one binary classifiers is introduced and the performance is compared with those of existing tertiary classifiers. According to the results, the Q/sub 3/ prediction accuracy of new tertiary classifier reaches 78.8% and this is better than the best result reported in the literature.     

Application of new imaging and calculation techniques to activity and dose assessment in the case of a 106Ru contaminated wound

The aim of this paper is to describe the dosimetric evaluation of a point contamination that occurred in a laboratory during the examination of an irradiated sample. The incident led to point contamination of the operator's finger due to the presence of mainly 106Ru, with its progeny, 106Rh. The paper reports on the activity and dose assessment, performed using several methods. The measured activity was obtained using a conventional device based on a germanium detector and confirmed using software developed at IRSN, based on reconstruction of voxel phantom associated with the Monte Carlo N-Particle code (MCNP) for in vivo measurement. Two dose assessment calculations were performed using both analytical and Monte Carlo methods, applying the same approach as for activity assessment based on the personal computational phantom of the finger. The results are compared, followed by a discussion on the suitability of the tools described in this study.     

A forward-looking system for planning and monitoring metrological support to an organization

The ARM-Uchet computerized system is considered, which is intended for accounting, planning, and monitoring for metrological support to an organization and has been implemented on an IBM PC AT. Schemes are given for the basic modes of operation and for the software suites, as well as the database structure.Translated from Izmeritel'naya Tekhnika, No. 7, pp. 70–71, July, 1994.     

Acid-degradable gadolinium-based nanoscale coordination polymer: A potential platform for targeted drug delivery and potential magnetic resonance imaging

Nano Research - During conventional chemotherapy for cancer, nonspecific drug distribution, which causes serious side effects in normal tissues, is a serious limitation. Thus, it is desirable to...     

Composite platinum group metals: A new structural material for glass handling equipment and laboratory apparatus

The cost of platinum and platinum-rich alloys inevitably leads to attempts to find cheaper alternative materials, particularly for applications where they are used for structural purposes. Previous work has generally been centred on coating base metals with platinum or on the development of palladium-rich alloys. However, both of these approaches have limitations particularly with regard to strength, corrosion resistance and reliability. The application of zirconia grain stablised technology to this problem has now resulted in the production of a composite trimetallic material, designated ZGS Platinum “TriM”. This largely overcomes the problems associated with earlier materials and dramatically reduces material costs.     

The imaging pin detector: A simple and effective new imaging device for soft X-rays and soft beta emissions

The development of a new bidimensional imaging detector system for soft X- and beta radiations is reported. Based on the detection of the differential induction signals on pickup electrodes placed around a point anode (or pin) in a gas avalanche detector, the system described has achieved a spatial resolution of better than 1 mm fwhm over a field of 30 mm diameter while preserving excellent pulse height resolution (20% fwhm for 5.9 keV X-rays). While limited to applications in which fairly low counting rates are encountered ( < 5 kHz) the present device offers considerable potential as a cheap and robust imaging system for applications in X-ray diffraction and autoradiography.     

Electronic referencing techniques for quantitative NMR: pitfalls and how to avoid them using amplitude-corrected referencing through signal injection

NMR spectroscopy can be a superior analytical technique for quantification of compounds dissolved in solution. Traditionally a chemical reference standard of known concentration is added to the sample. The concentration of the solute can then be determined by comparing the signal integrals. However, it can be inconvenient or impossible to use internal references. Electronic referencing was developed to circumvent problems with internal standards and has been used successfully in well-controlled situations. However, it is not always possible or convenient to have samples where the dielectric sample properties do not change from one to the next. We propose a modification of the old electronic referencing technique that takes into account the electronic changes between dissimilar samples. We have called this new technique Amplitude-corrected Referencing Through Signal Injection or ARTSI.     

Conjugation of luminescent quantum dots with antibodies using an engineered adaptor protein to provide new reagents for fluoroimmunoassays

We describe the preparation and characterization of bioinorganic conjugates made with highly luminescent semiconductor CdSe-ZnS core-shell quantum dots (QDs) and antibodies for use in fluoroimmunoassays. The conjugation strategy employs an engineered molecular adaptor protein, attached to the QDs via electrostatic/hydrophobic self-assembly, to link the inorganic fluorophore with antibodies. In this method, the number of antibodies conjugated to a single QD can be varied. In addition, we have developed a simple purification strategy based on mixed-composition conjugates of the molecular adaptor and a second two-domain protein that allows the use of affinity chromatography. QD-antibody conjugates were successfully used in fluoroimmunoassays for detection of both a protein toxin (staphylococcal enterotoxin B) and a small molecule (2,4,6-trinitrotoluene).     

Utilization potential lignocellulosic waste biomass to produce carbon support by using new activation reagent (H3BO3 and SrCl2): structural and adsorptive properties

ABSTRACT

Activated carbons series were produced from the orange peel by chemical activation using strontium chloride (SrCl₂) and boric acid (H₃BO₃). The activation temperature effects and type of activation reagents on the surface and chemical properties of activated carbon have been investigated. The surface area of the activated carbons is 577 and 290 m² g^?1 for H₃BO₃ and SrCl₂ activation_, respectively. An increase in the temperature for both H₃BO₃ and SrCl₂ led to a decrease in the yields of the activated carbons. The yield of H₃BO₃ series is higher than the yield of SrCl₂. The obtained activated carbons were heteroporous with the mesopore. Orange peel can be used alternative waste biomass for the mesoporous activated carbon productions. Samples were characterized by XRD, SEM, FTIR, and TGA analysis.     

Applying Value Stream Mapping to eliminate waste: a case study of an original equipment manufacturer for the automotive industry

Since its beginning, lean manufacturing has built a worldwide reputation based on results related to production improvement and cost reduction in several companies. This management philosophy focuses on customer value creation through the elimination of production wastes. Lean methods and techniques have spread their scope from the automotive industry to a wide range of industries and services. This article presents a case study that describes the use of the lean tool value stream mapping in the production process of automotive parts for a major automotive company. At the beginning of the project, relevant data from the process were collected and analysed. Subsequently, the initial process was mapped, the related wastes were identified, and then future processes were mapped and financial results were estimated. The proposals were presented on kaizen meetings, the action plan was discussed and the decision regarding which option to choose was taken. Consequently, the Cycle Time and the level of the workforce were reduced, the process was improved and savings were obtained.